


as to the river, so to the sea

by pepperfield



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Nakia/T'Challa, Erik Was Raised in Wakanda AU, Family Fluff, Gen, Gift Giving, Hanging Out, Non-Linear Narrative, Sibling Bonding, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield
Summary: “I’m your favorite sister!”T’Challa nods. “She has a point,” he tells Erik, who flicks a chip at him.“And I’m your favorite cousin!”“Mm, debatable. I have many cousins,” T’Challa says and this time Erik throws an entire handful of chips.Scenes from a life hypothetical.





	as to the river, so to the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhhh this is just extremely self-indulgent fluff about siblings and cousins hanging out; no plot or redeeming features here! Please do not hesitate to contact me about any issues or concerns, and thanks for reading!!

“What _is_ this?”

“It is art, brother. That I made for you.” Shuri pretends to look displeased, but she’s clearly hiding a smile behind the downturned corners of her mouth. “I know fine art isn’t my forte, but you do not have to look so confused. Very rude,” she tsks.

T’Challa lifts the picture, hoping that if he examines it more closely it will begin to make more sense, but nothing comes to him. It’s a photoshopped image that Shuri has, for some incomprehensible reason, decided to print and frame, consisting only of the words “DO IT FOR HER” and bizarrely positioned photos of Nakia scattered across a pale background. They’re good photos, he’ll admit. Nakia looks great. He just doesn’t have any idea what he’s supposed to _do_ with this thing.

“Is this…memes?” he asks her, eyes narrowed. “Are you doing memes again? Is this an offering for The Vine?” He glances at her suspiciously, trying to spot any camera hidden on her.

“Stop that! I know you know you’re saying it wrong!” she screeches, and he schools his face into the most innocent of masks.

“You know these young people things you do are impenetrable to an old man like me. But I cherish all your gifts, Shuri, and I will treat it accordingly. I just need to find the right place to put this.” 

She makes the face she always does when she knows he’s patronizing her, and tells him, sugar-sweet, “There’s a space on your wall right across from your bed. Wouldn’t that be nice, seeing this lovely sight first thing each morning?”

T’Challa looks it over again; amidst the photos of her smiling there’s a picture of Nakia mid-kick, eyes flashing and her beautiful mouth pulled back in a scowl. There’s something quietly unsettling about this off-kilter collage of his girlfriend and he isn’t sure he wants it too readily available to look at. “I think it would be more alarming than anything,” he tells his sister. “Perhaps the second bedroom in the east wing.”

Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “That is where Erik stays when he comes home to visit.”

“Exactly.” He’s fairly certain Erik was the one on the receiving end of Nakia’s kick that time; it will be a nice memory for his cousin to relive upon waking.

Shuri gives him the briefest flash of smile before she pulls her stern countenance back together and lets out a put-upon sigh. “Giving my gift away, brother? I thought you’d do something like that. Which is why I came prepared.” 

She uncovers the other picture on the table, which is the same as the first, but this time all the images of Nakia have been replaced with scenic vistas and shots of Wakanda’s most famous cities and landmarks. He receives this one with as much bemusement as the first, and now he’s standing in his sister’s lab, holding _two_ strange pictures he has no need for.

“What-”

“Do it for her,” Shuri tells him solemnly as she returns to her workbench. “Do it for Wakanda.”

“Okay?”

  


T’Challa has to settle for hanging one in his closet, because he can’t justify foisting both of them off to Erik’s room, but at least the weirdness of having to see it every morning is worth it for the palpable consternation that Erik exudes when he notices the Nakia collage for the first time.

“What the shit,” he says, giving the picture a wide berth before dumping his bags on the floor. It’s a learned behavior from all times Nakia has whacked him in the arm throughout their adolescence for saying something grossly stupid about her. “Why’s there a picture of your demon girl in my room, T?” On closer inspection, a spark of recognition lights in his eyes, and he snorts. “Why are you putting memes up on the wall? My room isn’t the fucking MOMA.”

T’Challa smiles, admiring his sister’s handiwork, and slings an arm over Erik’s shoulder. “A gift from Shuri. Welcome home.”

\--

The first gift that Shuri ever gives T’Challa is a mouthful of milk that she lets dribble back down into his hand when he goes to pat her cheek.

The first gift she ever gives Erik is her pacifier.

“I win,” Erik says, too smug for a teenager holding up a sparkling green binky like a precious jewel.

“She threw it at your head,” T’Challa counters, lifting his sister – _his_ sister, not _Erik’s_ , never mind the fact that he and Erik are functionally brothers at this point – and cradling her against his chest. Shuri drools on him. He smirks in order to pretend this is what he wanted to happen.

“At least one of you has good aim. Uncle will be so proud.” Erik uses his hand to mime the flight path of the spear T’Challa threw earlier today, wiggling it crookedly before landing it into his knee and faking a yelp of pain and then a higher-pitched voice crying out “nooo, not W’Kabi! Poor W’Kabi!”. This is offensive; T’Challa wasn’t even close to hitting W’Kabi.

“I can’t aim? You can’t dodge!”

“Oh, like you can? The only reason Okoye doesn’t whoop your ass too is ‘cause she’s not stupid enough to accidentally kill off her meal ticket, your _highness_. Fuckin’ royals,” Erik scoffs, doing an exaggerated bow in T’Challa’s direction.

“You’re royalty too, _Prince N’Jadaka_ ,” T’Challa yells back in exasperation. Shuri burbles her agreement.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hand her over.”

T’Challa does so, and instantly scrabbles around his pocket to find his phone so he can capture this moment for endless blackmail in the future. Unfortunately, the picture he gets is more cute than it is hilarious, with Erik looking completely ambushed by the weight of Shuri’s attention fixed solely on him. How disappointing.

“Why is she so small,” Erik mutters to himself. He bounces Shuri gently in his arms, looking equal parts charmed and perplexed. “This ain’t good. How are we supposed to keep her safe?” he demands, wrapping her even closer, his eyes darting around at every sharp corner and overly polished surface.

“They managed well enough with you and me,” T’Challa says, softly amused at the way Erik cringes when Shuri makes an unhappy noise from being held too snugly.

“I was already a grown-ass kid when I came here, T. Tough, sturdy. And you, you always had that kinda poise even then. You’ve always been cat-like, y’know? Born to be the Black Panther, I guess.”

They talk about it, sometimes. The future, because someday T’Challa’s father will die, and T’Challa will become king. Not without Erik challenging him for the throne, because it’s his self-appointed duty to meet T’Challa at every step of the way, always striving to force him to be better. To make their country better.

Wakanda is his heart. It is his soul; it is quite possibly the greatest nation on the planet, but it isn’t perfect. Our isolationist policies need to change, Nakia tells him when he walks with her through the city, along the border, above the mines. We could be doing so damn much for so many people, Erik tells him when they sit on the outlook, watching the sunset, Erik’s hand tangled in the chain carrying his father’s ring. But that’s the future, and that’s why T’Challa needs to be prepared to make the hard decisions he knows are right when he inherits the throne.

“You were seven, Erik. And I wasn’t half so graceful until you came around to keep me on my toes.” He bumps his shoulder gently against Erik’s, silently taking Shuri back when she waves her arms at him. For a moment, all he does is stare into her dark eyes, wondering at how it’s possible to love a person as much as he does her. She isn’t even half a year old yet, she certainly can’t talk or do much more than roll around, but he would rewrite the course of history for her.

“Hello, Shuri,” he says to her in Xhosa, smiling when she tries to curl her hand around his finger. “I can’t wait to see who you become.” 

\--

“I need to know our official social media policy.” Shuri says it like an opening argument, first thing in the morning over breakfast.

T’Challa hasn’t managed to ingest any caffeine yet and he’s certain he’s not ready for whatever this conversation has in store for him without it. He pauses in the middle of stirring his coffee – and why he’s stirring at all, he doesn’t know; he didn’t even put anything in it, he’s just moving a spoon around like an automaton – and looks blearily at his sister, who has her hands folded demurely in her lap.

“This is a trap,” he announces to the room at large, which includes just the two of them, Erik, and Ayo, who is busy making her own cup of tea next to him. “You’re trying to trick me, and I’m too tired to figure you out right now.”

“Untrue! I’m just curious.” She blinks rapidly several times in succession: lie. T’Challa is too tired for this too, so he turns to Erik for a translation and starts pacing as he drinks his coffee.

“She wants to make a Youtube account,” Erik supplies, his feet propped up on the marble table as he steadily works through a bowl of sugar-encrusted cereal. Shuri whirls around to scowl at him, outraged at the betrayal, and he shrugs. Erik’s allegiance between the two of them flip-flops daily, often dependent on which option will be most entertaining to him. “Why, exactly, I dunno. It’s not like you can put anything on there. Everything you build is under one gigantic NDA,” he says, waving his spoon disapprovingly at her. He notices T’Challa wafting aimlessly through the room and pushes a chair at him.

“He’s right,” T’Challa says as he takes his seat.

“I’m not going to upload anything about my _tech_ ,” she says with a huff. “I just want to make some fun videos and stuff.”

“Lemme go ahead and stop you there, sis. The internet doesn’t need another teenager inflicting shitty vlogs on people. Besides, whatever you do, you’re gonna get fuck all but a bunch of stupid-ass comments. Better not to start at all.”

“You are eating breakfast cookies. Your opinion does not count,” Shuri says, making a face at him. He makes one back. At the countertop, Ayo lets out the slightest noise, even as her expression remains unmoved.

“Hey, don’t knock my Oreo O’s. I had to go all the way to South Korea to get these.”

T’Challa looks at the asphalt rings floating around the greying milk in Erik’s bowl, and shakes his head. “And you’re brilliant, Shuri, but you are only fourteen,” he adds, absently watching his cousin inhale his morning candy. “You might just end up making a lot of garbage you’ll be embarrassed to watch in a few years.” When he looks back up, Shuri is pouting at him, her last resort for when both of them are siding against her. “Maybe you can start with Twitter first?” he suggests as a peace offering. “I can sell Baba on that one.”

“Twitter is okay, I suppose,” she says, spinning around on the rotating seat of her stool, braids twirling around her as she goes. “I can still do the M’Baku reaction video I wanted to. And the ones about brother tripping up in front of Nakia.”

Erik glances up at this, interest apparently spiking from the straightening of his posture. A long-honed sixth sense sets off warning bells in the back of T’Challa’s mind. “Wait, wait. Hold up. You’re doing what to M’Baku?” Erik asks, lowering his legs to the ground.

“Just a little prank! Like hiding speakers all over his throne room and playing pop songs, or replacing one of those furs he likes to wear with a Wookiee costume or something.”

He mulls this over for a split second. “Nah, forget speakers. Let’s get some of your kimoyo recorders up in there; find out who he’s meeting with.”

T’Challa almost chokes. “Erik, _no_. No counter-espionage against M’Baku - that would be _actively_ in defiance of our treaties with the Jabari.”

“ _T’Challa_ ,” Erik responds, using that tone of voice he uses when he’s about to sink his metaphorical claws in. It’s how he convinced T’Challa and W’Kabi to sneak into the rhino pens in the middle of the night when they were teenagers. Bad call. And how he convinced T’Challa it would be fine to let Shuri join them in the lab while he worked on his prototype suit. Okay call until Shuri wandered off to study the new mine technology and they’d almost ripped out their hair trying to find her. T’Challa’s been burned too many times now to fall for it again so easily.

“No.”

“Come on, don’t you want to know how the Jabari are doing? See if there’s anything we could reach an agreement on, anything we could help out with?”

“Maybe a little, but not if he’s going to _break my face_ when he finds out how we know. M’Baku and his people are on good terms with us right now, and we are not going to jeopardize that.”

He levels his most kingly stare at his cousin, who meets his gaze in a short staring contest before giving in with a cavalier wave of his hand.

“Alright, I changed my mind; let’s get her a Youtube channel. Play some pranks.”

Shuri cheers, raising her arms up in victory.

“Erik!”

The traitor in question shrugs off T’Challa’s concern. “Look, it’s gonna be fine, cuz. No spying, I promise. Like Shuri says, it’ll be something harmless. We’ll all have a good laugh. M’Baku included.”

“No, absolutely not. You two are forbidden from going to Jabari Land. I have no desire to see you returned to me limb by limb.”

“M’Baku wouldn’t do that,” Shuri says, but she sounds unsure, and that’s what T’Challa decides to capitalize on.

Very sternly, he leans forward in his chair. “M’Baku once climbed back up his mountain using only one hand and his teeth. M’Baku is immune to seven poisons and four types of snake venom after drinking some with his breakfast every morning since he was ten. I have personally witnessed him crush a piece of vibranium through the strength of his thighs alone.”

“They say that when M’Baku was born, every animal within ten miles went silent all at once to pay their respects,” Ayo says quietly from her post, eyes cast down into her cup and mouth carefully poised so she doesn’t give her smile away. It’s a string of jokes M’Baku has been using on nosy kids since they were teens, but Shuri doesn’t need to know that.

“Okay, okay! We won’t go to Jabari Land,” Shuri concedes, looking even more suspicious of him than ever. She probably figures it isn’t worth his nagging to continue. “We’ll just record you instead.”

“I probably already have something good on my phone,” Erik says, striding over to Shuri’s side, phone at the ready, just to make it abundantly clear whose ally he is at this moment. “You’re too young to remember the time he was practicing his moves in the mirror and Auntie and Okoye walked in. That was comedy gold. Or when Aneka flipped him into the water in his new armor - he looked like a turtle. Classic T.”

“Oh, let’s do the turtle one,” Shuri says happily, and they’re making their way toward the door, no doubt to go set up her account right this second.

Sure, public humiliation at the hands of his family is exactly what T’Challa, proud and honorable crown prince of Wakanda, wants and needs. But he’s always had some difficulty denying his sister anything, so he just sighs, and puts in a simple request. “Just not the video with the rhino pen, okay? Please?”

\--

For T’Challa’s twenty-sixth birthday, Shuri makes him a board game.

“It’s really cool, brother,” she says, flying across the lab floor as fast as her short little ten-year-old legs will take her. “I’ve been working with some of the old hologram stuff we have - I thought it might have some useful models to use in my remote VR prototype, and I thought it would be fun to adapt it for a game!”

She leads him to a cleared table where Erik is already sitting and setting up pieces, throwing out rapid-fire explanations all the while. The gist of it is that a player wins when they unite all the territory under their rule through a combination of resource management and by making deals and alliances with other players. T’Challa chooses the antelope playing piece, smiling when a small hologram flickers into existence to follow his piece around the board.

A few rounds in, it becomes clear that he’s at a disadvantage, since Erik was apparently Shuri’s chief playtester while she was designing it. After suffering through some middling luck, where he only collected a mediocre number of material and currency chips, he realizes that at this point, he ought to throw in with one of the other two, since he’s fallen drastically behind with little chance of catching up. The others must come to the same conclusion because suddenly they’re being conspicuously kind to him.

“Here, I’ll trade you fifteen wood stores for your eastern port,” Erik offers on T’Challa’s turn, which is a much more generous offer than the territory really warrants.

He makes to accept before Shuri latches onto his wrist. “No, wait, I’ll give you that plus thirty gold,” she says, pushing the little metal tokens at him.

“Sold,” T’Challa decides, handing over the thin holo-card. Shuri pushes over a pile of chips and gleefully watches as her colors overtake T’Challa’s in the small holographic rendering of the eastern port.

Erik’s eyebrows draw together, as he surveys his current kingdom and Shuri’s encroaching influence. He rolls his dice silently, and chooses to advance his piece toward T’Challa’s border, before crossing his arms.

“Alright, let’s make a deal. We both know your odds for winning are slim, so I’m proposing an alliance. You help me win this, and I’ll make you pancakes for your birthday.”

Erik’s chocolate banana pancake recipe is one of the few things he remembers from when both his parents were still alive. T’Challa doesn’t usually care for American sweets, but he’s been a sucker for these pancakes since they were kids making a mess of the royal kitchen, stirring thick buttermilk batter and chopping bananas in uneven slices. 

For Erik to be offering means that he and Shuri are officially at war, which is why T’Challa takes the time to deliberate, savoring the way they both watch him tensed with anticipation. 

“A persuasive deal. I think I’d be willing to accept,” he finally says.

Shuri jolts forward, and slaps her hands down on T’Challa’s pile of resource tokens. “Hold on! Don’t fall for his trick, T’Challa. Erik was going to make pancakes anyway.”

“Was not,” Erik scowls.

Shuri scrambles on. “If you ally with me, I promise not to rat you out to Mama next time you do something bad.” T’Challa hides a smile behind his hand; a ten-year-old’s idea of “something bad” is broad and strange, but he appreciates the attempt.

“It’s a tempting counter-offer. I’m not sure which one I should accept. I do want pancakes.”

“Remember, I’m your favorite sister!”

T’Challa nods, considering this. “She has a point,” he tells Erik, who flicks a chip at him.

“And I’m your favorite cousin!”

“Mm, debatable. I have many cousins,” T’Challa says and this time Erik throws an entire handful of chips.

“You’re going to regret crossing me,” Erik warns. He’s definitely already analyzing the best way to crush them.

“I often do,” T’Challa admits, but he turns to Shuri regardless. “My queen,” he says, with a deferential nod. “My power is your power.”

“Good choice,” she says, beaming at him as she grabs the dice.

  


It’s a close match, but with their powers combined, Shuri takes the win. Erik grumbles, but as Shuri predicted, he makes pancakes anyway. He uses chocolate chips to make a letter in each of T’Challa’s, resulting in a rude message, but they’re delicious regardless.

\--

The first thing Erik does when he boards is yank T’Challa into a hard hug.

“I should’ve been there. I should’ve fucking _known_ , there’s been talk of something on the horizon for a while now, after the Sokovia shit went down, but I didn’t think-”

T’Challa pulls away to grip Erik’s shoulders. “Erik. N’Jadaka, stop. Stop. There’s no use in blaming yourself. Even if you had been there…” There’s no saying whether anything would have changed. T’Challa had failed, but with both of them, might they have been fast enough? Erik’s relationship with T’Chaka had always been complicated, but T’Challa knows without a doubt that he would have done all in his power to protect his king. But he doesn’t have the luxury to dwell on regrets and hypotheticals now. They have to move forward.

“Then it’s not on you either,” Erik tells him. T’Challa swallows through the pain in his throat as he remembers the way his father had fallen, but he nods. 

“I’m trying to remember that. Thank you for coming home for this. I know your mission is important but I’m thankful you’ll be there with mother and Shuri.”

“You know I wouldn’t miss it. Someone’s gotta make sure you’re ready.” He grins, quick and rueful, before his face grows serious again. “I’m really sorry that it went down this way, T’Challa. But you’re going to be a good king. You’re going to take us into a new age.” He clasps a hand around the side of T’Challa’s neck, patting briskly once before he moves to take a seat.

“How’s Auntie? You know she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met, but…”

“I think the coronation preparations are keeping her afloat right now. There will...we will have time after, to properly grieve. We can last until then.” 

“Yeah. I know you can,” and the worry under his tone pains T’Challa all the more, because even after all the loss Erik has suffered himself, empathy still runs so deep through his veins.

Shuri calls in right afterwards, sounding a mix of excited and harried as she asks, “Brother, did you get him? Did it go okay?”

“He’s here,” T’Challa responds, and Erik raises a hand in greeting.

“Hey, Shuri. How you holding up?”

She hesitates for a moment on the other end, before steeling herself. T’Challa only hears the slightest waver in her voice when she speaks. “I am- I will be fine. I will be more fine after brother takes the throne and we can be done with all this coronation nonsense.”

“Don’t call it nonsense, Shuri,” T’Challa chides, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s known for his entire life that one day this day would come, but now that it’s upon him, he’s half-ready to just have it done with, and half-hoping that it never happens at all. But wishing won’t bring his father back, so he lets Shuri complain on his behalf.

“You mad about the corset?” Erik guesses, and Shuri huffs.

“It’s very uncomfortable! It looks nice, but at what cost, N’Jadaka? _At what cost_?”

He laughs, expression lightening the way that only Shuri can make happen. “If I could fit in it, I’d trade you.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Yours looks itchy.”

They catch up while Okoye directs them higher into the air. “We’re on course to Nigeria now,” she pipes up from her position at the helm.

“Nakia?” Erik guesses, and T’Challa nods.

“We’re extracting her tonight.”

“Any bets?” Okoye asks, her voice turning sly.

“Fifty on him saying something dumb,” Erik says with conviction, and T’Challa frowns.

“My vote is for freeze,” and Okoye mimics the action, pausing awkwardly in place and staring vacantly at a fixed point.

“Mine too!” chirps Shuri, and okay, that’s enough harassment from his loved ones for one day. T’Challa waves his arm irritably through the air, trying to dispel their utter lack of faith in him. 

“I’m not going to freeze or say anything dumb. I am completely calm- Nakia doesn’t have some kind of _hold_ on me-” dammit, he’s spluttering like a fool, “Nakia and I are fine. It’s fine. I’m just going to drop in there and tell her the situation, and she will return with us because we are adults. Who are very good at communicating. Yes.”

“Yes,” Erik mocks.

“So very, _very_ good at communication,” Okoye mutters under her breath, sharing a eye roll with Erik. T’Challa settles for securing his habit back in place and ignoring them, and ignoring the way his pulse jitters at the thought of seeing his ex again. It’s the worst when they find common ground against him.

\--

A package arrives a few weeks after Shuri has started her new position in California. 

T’Challa is home again, in between meetings with other world leaders, and a plain cardboard box is delivered directly to him by the Dora while he’s preparing for his next press conference. He knows immediately his sister sent it from the little doodle in black marker of a sleeping cat dreaming about math.

He calls her before opening it, because it’s been about a month since he’s seen her now and he misses her face.

“Brother! How have your meetings been?” she asks brightly when she accepts the call. There’s a pen in her hand and a coil of wire wrapped around her palm; she probably forgot she left it there.

“Long. Tedious,” and at times, extremely aggravating. “But important. It’s slow, but we are progressing.”

“Good. Nakia is out at a community lunch right now. Do you miss her?” Shuri teases, and T’Challa lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“Yes. But you are the one I am calling right now. I received your package today.”

“Excellent! Have you opened it?” When he shakes his head no, she claps her hands together once, smiling with her teeth. “Open it! We went to Disneyland with the neighborhood children last week! I bought you a shirt, brother. I hope you like it.”

The t-shirt he pulls out is bright green, with the bulbous face of some unknown creature smirking back at him. It looks like some of the cartoon characters T’Challa has seen before, but not one he recognizes.

“Who is this?” he asks, cautiously rubbing the cotton blend fabric between his fingers.

“Pete the cat! He is a large, villainous buffoon.” Wow. 

“And that is why you thought of me when you saw this shirt?” he asks, shooting her a look. She laughs.

“Well, no, I chose him because he is a cat, and I thought it would match you. You know, Black Panther and all that!”

“Were there no better choices? There must be other cartoon cats.” 

“Maybe, but I knew this was the right shirt for you. I sent one to dear cousin Erik too. Anyway, put it on! I wanna see how it fits.”

He grimaces down at Pete’s smug face but does as he’s told, pulling the t-shirt on over his tunic and relegating himself to his sister’s ridicule.

As expected she giggles again, but doesn’t tease him any further. “Looking good! Send me a picture; I need to get back to work now.”

  


Later that evening, he sends a call to Erik, who’s stationed in New York now. He’s not quite undercover, but neither is his relationship to Wakanda openly known.

Erik immediately howls with laughter when he sees T’Challa’s shirt, demanding, “Seriously, Pete? I gotta give Shuri props. _Pete_.”

“I thought it would grow on me, but his face is just so unpleasant. Who did you get?”

At this, Erik’s laughter dies down, and an unreadable expression crosses his face. He glances around furtively before lifting the hem of his hoodie to reveal the blue shirt underneath. A jovial, toothy animal smiles back at T’Challa, who slaps his hand against the table when he recognizes who it is.

“Oh, I know this one. Goofy! How appropriate.”

“How is this appropriate?”

“You know, he’s sort of lanky and foolish. Fitting, right?”

“Fuck off,” Erik says with a wry smile as he pulls his sweatshirt back down. “Don’t try and come for me when you’re a fucking used-car salesman as an overweight cat.”

“That’s me,” T’Challa says, holding his arms out to showcase his alter ego and Erik laughs again.

“It was nice of her to get us souvenirs. We should return the favor.” Revenge is usually a slow, drawn-out process among the three of them.

“I’ll keep an eye out; you do the same. I’ll catch up with you about it later.”

“Sounds good. ‘Night, cuz.”

Erik signs off, leaving T’Challa seated at his desk with his work still awaiting him. But he has a few more days, so he shuts off his computer and sets his papers aside, stopping to straighten a picture frame before leaving the room. It’s a photo of when Shuri was about five years old, glancing off screen at their parents while she stands holding hands with both Erik and T’Challa. He rubs a speck of dust off the frame before shutting off the lights and exiting his office. T’Challa’s family is scattered across the globe, but they always know how to find their way home.


End file.
